Two decorated Canadian athletes are among those competing at this weekend’s inaugural Enhanced Games – an event billed by its creators as a scientific reset for elite performance and by its critics as a direct challenge to the global anti‑doping system.

The competition, first introduced as a concept in June 2023 and already dubbed the “Doping Olympics” and the “Steroid Olympics,” invites athletes to perform while openly using substances that remain banned in traditional high‑performance sport.

What the Enhanced Games are trying to be

The Enhanced Games are a new global multi-sport event created by Australian businessman Aron D’Souza. Unlike the Olympic Games and other mainstream championships, the project dispenses with anti‑doping controls and permits athletes to use performance-enhancing drugs (PEDs) that are prohibited under the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) code.

D’Souza has framed the concept as a movement built on “transparency, science and choice,” unveiled at an event last May where he argued that modern sport has failed to keep pace with wider advances in medicine and technology. In his vision, supervised enhancement is presented as a more honest version of what many athletes and officials privately acknowledge: that doping has been a persistent feature of elite sport for decades.

WATCH | Here’s what you need to know about the games:

What are the Enhanced Games?

Athletes from around the world – including two Canadians – are competing in the Enhanced Games this weekend in Las Vegas. The athletes are allowed to use performance enhancers typically banned in sport. But some organizations, like the International Olympic Committee, aren’t happy. Here’s everything you need to know.

Set against the glow of the Las Vegas Strip, the first edition is scheduled for Sunday, with roughly 2,500 invite-only spectators expected to attend. The setting underlines the commercial ambition of the project: a made-for-broadcast, high‑stakes showcase built around star athletes and big prize funds rather than medals tables and national delegations.

The winners of each event will receive $250,000 US, with $1 million US promised for anyone who breaks world records in the 100‑metre sprint and 50‑metre butterfly. Any such performances, however, will not be recognized by existing international federations or record‑keeping bodies.

Event programme and Canadian interest

Forty-two athletes from around the world are set to compete across a compact programme designed to highlight power, speed and spectacle. The schedule features:

• Track and field: 100m sprint, 100m and 110m hurdles.
• Weightlifting: snatch, clean and jerk.
• Strongman: deadlift.
• Swimming: 50m and 100m freestyle, 50m and 100m butterfly.

Canada’s presence is concentrated in strength sports. Two‑time World’s Strongest Man champion Mitchell Hooper is entered in the strongman deadlift, while Pan American and Commonwealth Games record holder Boady Santavy competes in weightlifting.

Santavy, a two-time Olympic weightlifter, has said he was motivated to appear at the Enhanced Games by the long‑documented doping problems in his own sport and his experience of competing clean against athletes using banned substances. For him, the attraction lies in the claim of a transparent “level playing field” in an environment where enhancement is declared rather than hidden.

For both Canadians, the decision carries potential career consequences. The Enhanced Games sit entirely outside the established Olympic movement and WADA system; athletes are effectively choosing between a conventional pathway that runs through national teams and sanctioned world championships, and a new, privately controlled circuit that offers significant prize money but no route to Olympic selection or official records.

Collision with the global anti-doping order

The most immediate impact of the Enhanced Games is on governance. WADA and the International Olympic Committee (IOC) have condemned the event, warning that it normalizes substance use that existing rules define as cheating and medically risky.

The IOC and WADA athletes’ commission released a joint statement last year describing the project as a “betrayal of everything that we stand for,” arguing that public promotion of performance-enhancing substances sends a dangerous message to current and future generations of athletes. The statement highlighted the potential for serious long-term health consequences, including the risk of death, and labelled any encouragement of PED use as irresponsible and immoral.

Those objections sit within a formal regulatory structure. Under the World Anti-Doping Code, signatory sports and national anti-doping organizations are required to prohibit the non‑therapeutic use of anabolic agents, blood‑boosting hormones and a wide range of stimulants. Athletes found using those substances in code‑compliant events face suspensions, loss of results and potential team sanctions.

World Aquatics has gone further by introducing a rule that bars participation in the Enhanced Games for athletes who wish to remain eligible for its own competitions. That stance raises the stakes for swimmers considering an enhanced event: an appearance in Las Vegas could close the door on future world championships or Olympic Games in their sport.

In contrast, Enhanced Games organizers present their model as a response to a system they argue is both ineffective and opaque. They portray existing anti‑doping structures as unable to eliminate drug use while still placing the financial and reputational burden of enforcement largely on athletes.

Health, ethics and the risk of imitation

Organizers say athletes are only permitted to use substances approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and administered under medical supervision. The list of allowed products – all outlawed by WADA for competition – includes:

• Testosterone and anabolic steroids such as methenolone and nandrolone.
• Hormones and growth factors such as human growth hormone and erythropoietin (EPO).
• Metabolic modulators such as meldonium, and stimulants including Adderall.

The central question for public health experts is not only what happens inside the Enhanced Games but also what happens beyond them. If a heavily marketed event normalizes steroid and hormone use among elite athletes, there is concern that recreational lifters, amateur competitors and young prospects may attempt to copy those regimes without the medical oversight promised by organizers.

Ian Ritchie, an associate kinesiology professor at Brock University in Ontario, has pointed out that such unsupervised use would be a serious problem – but that, in many communities, it is already a reality. For at least a decade, he notes, people in different sectors of society have used performance-enhancing drugs to try to change their bodies and improve performance.

That context helps to explain both the attraction and the alarm. Supporters argue that bringing enhancement into the open, with doctors involved, is safer than a black‑market arms race in which some athletes dope in secret while others take risks just to keep up. Opponents counter that any organized competition built on enhancement inevitably widens the audience for such substances and undermines campaigns that seek to prevent their use in youth and grassroots sport.

Cheating, stigma and the legacy of past scandals

The Enhanced Games arrive after half a century of high‑profile doping scandals that have shaped public expectations of fairness. The cases of Canadian sprinter Ben Johnson and American cyclist Lance Armstrong turned both athletes into global reference points for cheating, stripping titles and reshaping policy debates around testing and sanctions.

Ritchie does not see those attitudes fading quickly. He notes that anti-doping norms have been embedded since the 1960s, when the Olympic movement began to codify bans on stimulants and other substances, and that a “pretty huge social undercurrent” still views doping as unethical.

In that framework, many fans, athletes and officials define enhancement in competition as a form of cheating. For those invested in that view, the Enhanced Games are not simply an alternative model; they are a direct challenge to the moral language that has underpinned international sport for generations.

What is at stake for athletes and federations

For federations, the emergence of a parallel, privately owned event raises practical questions. National Olympic committees and international federations such as World Aquatics must decide how to treat athletes who cross over into an explicitly enhanced competition, and whether participation should affect selection, funding or eligibility for national teams and development programmes.

The issue is particularly acute in sports already under scrutiny for doping, such as weightlifting. Santavy’s presence in Las Vegas highlights a long‑running tension inside those communities: athletes who believe they have competed clean in compromised fields may see the Enhanced Games as an opportunity to reset the terms of engagement, while their federations may view that choice as incompatible with the values and rules they are required to uphold.

Commercially, the outcome of the Las Vegas event will be closely watched by investors and media partners. The prize money on offer signals that the Enhanced Games are not a one‑off exhibition but an attempt to build a recurring property that can sit alongside, or in open opposition to, existing world championships and multi‑sport events.

Permitted substances and competitive design

The decision to focus on short, explosive disciplines is significant. Events such as the 100m sprint, Olympic lifts and strongman deadlift are especially sensitive to increases in muscle mass, power and recovery – areas where anabolic steroids, growth hormones and blood‑boosting agents can be transformative.

By centring the programme on these events and offering bonuses for world‑record‑level performances in the 100m and 50m butterfly, the organizers are effectively staging a direct comparison between enhanced competition and the benchmark achievements of the existing system. Even though no official records will be recognized, any eye‑catching times or lifts will quickly be measured against Olympic and world championship standards in the public debate.

How and where to watch

The Enhanced Games are being positioned as a global broadcast product rather than a traditional ticketed meet. Opening events will be livestreamed on Sunday from 6:30 p.m. ET on Roku in North America and internationally on the Games’ YouTube channel.

The event will close with a performance by the Killers, underlining the organizers’ attempt to package the Games as an entertainment spectacle as much as a sporting contest.